Father John Misty’s Explanation For His Taylor Swift/Ryan Adams Covers Shows That He’s A King Troll

There’s no doubt that the man behind a character like Father John Misty loves to take the piss out of just about everyone. So it should come as no surprise that Josh Tillman was trolling on several levels when he jumped into the Ryan Adams/Taylor Swift media circus.

In an interview with WPRK in Louisville, Tillman says that he came up with the idea for his Lou Reed-aping covers after hearing his tour manager listening to Ryan Adams’ 1989. Tillman said he’d never heard the originals, at least actively.

“I’m sure I’ve been walking by a Cinnabon or something at the airport and heard it,” he said.

Apparently, Tillman recorded the tracks while reading from a printout of the lyrics. And he didn’t expect something that was put together in such a slap-dash fashion to make the impact that it did.

“By the time I got back to the bus that night, my [tour manager] was like, ‘It’s the top trend on Facebook! It’s on USA Today!’, and I was like, ‘This is ridiculous,’ so I went and took them down, thinking, ‘Now that’s over’.”

Of course, news outlets wanted to know why Tillman pulled the songs. And that’s when he decided to take his trolling to the next level.

“I was annoyed at the media. I was like, ‘These people will print anything’, so I went and gave them the most fraudulent, the most blatantly absurd, unprintable piece of surrealistic nonsense – and they printed it!”

Tillman is referring to a statement he released where he claims to have taken the songs down because the spirit of Lou Reed came to him in a dream and asked him to. The lesson here — if you haven’t learned it from songs like “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” and “Bored in the USA” — is to never take anything Josh Tillman does at face value.